HR Recruiting Article Review – Peer Reviewed Article

HR Recruiting Article Review

Columbia Southern University

HR Recruiting Article Review

Employee recruiting is the process of identifying and attracting people to work for an organization (Stewart & Brown, 2015). The article entitled “Recruiting at Campus Job Fairs: Matching Candidate to Individual Industry Requirements” was co-authored by three students from Texas State University. The authors, Jana Minifie, James Bell, and Yi Zhang, performed this study to help understand what corporate recruiters look for during the recruitment process. It outlines recruiter reported preferences when evaluating and selecting candidates for hire. The most common areas considered important by recruiters where resumes, references, GPA, communication skills, personality traits, ethics, and intelligence. Effective career job fairs offer the potential of matching prospective employers with current and previously enrolled students in that university (Minifie, Bell, and Zhang, 2018). This study is intended to distinguish the difference between recruiting styles used by different types of employment sectors. No matter what the business, the recruitment process is one of the most important parts of building an informed, educated, and cohesive team.

Recruiting employees has to be far and away the most important part of business. I play a lot of fantasy football. There is one very easy way to have a horrible fantasy football season, and that is to allow your team to “auto draft”. Drafting an employment staff is very much like drafting a fantasy team. There are specific roles that must be filled with very specific kinds of people. The importance of taking a good quarterback is the same as selecting the perfect manager, the selection of a running back is like that of choosing an employee that can handle a very heavy workload without breaking down, and choosing wide receivers is similar to selecting employees that have fast and appropriate reactions when caught off guard by an ever changing environment. Each member is there for a specific task, and each is expected to be an expert in that area. It’s crucial to select members that will not let their team down in the clutch.

I do like the usage of job fairs by both schools and employers. The job fairs allow candidates to gather useful information from employers, and puts recruiters in a position to collect contact information and resumes from future employment candidates. This process supports my hiring format in that it connects candidates and HR managers only. There is, however, way more to hiring perfect employees than simply connecting with them at a job fair. I would use this contact information to request a second connection with the candidate and instruct them to write a job specific resume as it pertains to the desired position. Once this information is attained, I would make it very clear to HR managers that all resumes would be thoroughly evaluated for accuracy and integrity. In todays “copycat” world, it’s very easy for people to download phony resumes and embellish on qualifications. I would prefer to weed out all nonqualified individuals in the very beginning. I would then select, from those resumes, only the candidates that have been proven to hold the skills necessary to be a valuable member of my team. Then, each candidate would have three separate interviews. The first interview would be to inform the candidates of the requirements of the job; I would be careful to ensure all aspects, good and bad, were relayed to the candidate. At this point, it would be ok to see more than one candidate at a time. This interview would be structured, and would be based on written information that could be passed easily to the candidates. I would expect to lose a few applicants after this first step. The next interview would be one-on-one and less structured, and it would be presented in a way that allows the candidate to tour the company and see what it would be like to be an employee here. This process would be about a half a day visit that consists of a tour of the company in which the candidate could meet and shake hands with management and other employees from around the company. The final interview would be a full day in length and would allow the candidate time to interact with specific management and employees in the potential department of their employment. They would be closely monitored by HR staff during every interaction, and judged on a numerical scale based on written guidelines. This process would help ensure a smooth integration of the new employee. After selection, each new employee would be placed in a one year probationary period in which either the employee or HR managers reserve the right to terminate employment for any reason with no repercussions. This helps ensure that any inappropriate employee selection doesn’t affect the company negatively for the long term.

As a global conglomerate, the challenges for HR managers are somewhat more difficult to overcome. Language and customs barriers are the two most difficult hurdles to leap over when dealing with international branches. The interviewing process doesn’t change at all. The list of candidate abilities does change, however. When hiring candidates for positions overseas, it’s important that they understand that customs and traditions are far more important to customers and foreign employees overseas than they are here in America. In fact, in some countries, customs drive business decisions even more than the bottom line. Once hired, there would be an extensive training program designed to educate employees on the specific requirements of working and living in their future country of residency. There will also be an in depth training program in place for HR managers who are on location and are tasked with the hiring local employees. They will be sure to inform foreign candidates that they too will receive extensive cultural training designed to educate them on the customs and courtesies of American customers and employees. It’s very important for all employees to be well trained in company policies regarding inter-corporation community relations.

The surveys used in the study were very well thought out, and it was very nice to see the results would be a great benefit to college students and other future job applicants. The data collected during this study will most definitely assist in the connecting of candidates to the most appropriate employers, assuming the students are honest during their self-assessment. The study also proved that personality traits are sometimes more important than skills. The NFL recently encountered just such a situation in which one of the teams quarterbacks became more of an off-the-field distraction than what his on-field contributions could support. This led to his termination, and subsequently wasn’t able to find employment with any other team.

The results of the study indicated that there were very clear differences in what employers look for when selecting future employees. The authors concluded that there were specific approaches hiring officials take when in different job markets and by knowing this information, candidates can present a better resume and/or interviewing approach when trying to impress job fair representatives. This is all true, and I agree with them completely. However, while “shotgun” style tactics do work at getting business cards passed out and resumes collected, an in-depth structured hiring process is key to flawless employee selection. Job fairs are only the first step in a very extensive process of finding truly the perfect candidate for a specific position.

References

Stewart, G. L. & Brown, K. G. (2015). Human Resource Management. Linking Strategy to Practice. Third Edition. Hoboken, NJ. Wiley.

Minifie, J., Bell, J., & Zhang, Y. (2018). Recruiting at Campus Job Fairs: Matching Candidate to Individual Industry Requirements. Texas State University. Retrieved from http://eds.a.ebscohost.com.libraryresources.columbiasouthern.edu/eds/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=3&sid=84ea9f96-4cbd-41c3-8a50-e4d8ab9f0410%40sessionmgr4010